


No Music

by nom



Category: Farscape, Torchwood
Genre: Crossover, Jack Harkness/Winona the pulse pistol, Jack/Winona, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-23
Updated: 2009-10-23
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:31:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nom/pseuds/nom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How much of himself has Jack lost when all he wants is a gun?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://community.livejournal.com/omnijaxual/profile)[**omnijaxual**](http://community.livejournal.com/omnijaxual/) community.
> 
> Set sometime after Children of Earth.
> 
> **Warnings:** Gunporn?

Jack was at a bar -- when wasn't he, back then? -- when he ran into this guy. Looked kinda clean-cut despite the leathers and the flicker of something behind his eyes. Well, who was Jack to say anything -- he himself had been crazy before and would be again. Might even be he was crazy then, bitterness and grief having slipped over the edge to madness without his having noticed.

The bar was seedy. Not a hellhole, but far from fancy, and populated by any number of sad-sack losers, smalltime grifters, and a petty thief or two. Still, it served alcohol and had a quiet corner with tables, and he and the guy and a few other folks got into playing something a lot like poker.

Jack liked poker. He'd won a lot of things playing poker -- money, ships, girls, weapons, boys, secrets, booze, drugs, and once a small vineyard -- poker'd been good to him. Of course he'd also lost a lot, playing poker, but back in that bar, Jack decided not to think about that. Fact was, just then, not thinking about things too much in general was working pretty well for Jack.

After they'd played for a few hours, he and the guy had pretty much cleaned the other players out of money and valuables.

Jack looked at his pile of winnings and figured he'd get out while he was ahead. He and the guy seemed pretty evenly matched and he didn't feel like losing what he'd won so far. It'd be nice to eat well for a few weeks and not have to try and charm his way into someone's bed to get a decent night's sleep.

++

For some reason, after they stopped playing, he and the guy had another drink, and then one more. Then another, and they got to talking, swapping tall -- or who knows, maybe not-so-tall -- tales of places they'd been, marvels they'd seen, ships they'd flown, prisons they'd blown.

They didn't compare old lovers. Jack's more recent losses felt too raw, another thing he didn't want to think about, and back during one of the early drinks the guy had claimed to be a one-woman kind of man. Some kind of story there, Jack didn't want to know.

They drank some more. Craziest planets, yes, there they had another few good stories each. Most exotic wildlife, that too. And biggest firefights, which led to favorite weapons and another drink, to the joy of superior firepower in a fight.

Jack allowed that his Compact Laser Deluxe might be his most faithful weapon, having saved his life more times than he cared to number. Even so, he owned up to preferring the feel of something bigger in his hand, and maybe still regretted the loss of his Sonic Blaster.

The guy mentioned a friend's impressive-sounding combination sword/pulse rifle, but declared that he himself was very fond of his own pulse pistol. Starting to sound a little maudlin, he indicated that unlike some no-good inferior misfiring pulse pistols, she never failed him, his trusty Winona, she always came through for him, and see here, wasn't she the sweetest weapon he'd ever seen?

++

Looking at the gun the guy had just pulled out, Jack had to admit it was a goodlooking piece.

Sweet wasn't the word he'd have used though.

The guy asked if he wanted to touch, and Jack thought why not, and did.

++

That might have been a mistake, because no other gun Jack had handled had ever felt like this. It wasn't only the smooth curves, the dark ribbed grip, its heft, the weight of it in his hand. No, this gun with its aggressively hard, sleek shape, was giving him a feeling of responsiveness, of eager readiness. It was whispering to him of strength and power and a willingness to serve.

He wanted it, this dark gun with its thick grooved barrel and the coiled energy it carried. It looked strong and felt almost warm to his touch. Not sweet, no, but tough, powerful, there to back up those who trusted in it.

Why the hell the guy had given it such a feminine-sounding name was a mystery -- unless he had a serious kink for women able to kill with a pinky finger -- yet Jack was nothing if not a charm-the-natives kind of man, so he told that guy that yes, his Winona was a lovely gun.

++

The guy took her back, and Jack couldn't stop his eyes from following her, and asking if the guy might not be willing to part with her, for, say, most of his winnings. Which had been dumb, expressing his interest so clearly.

No, he couldn't give her up, but if Jack wanted to, well, play with her some more -- maybe try shooting her in the alley behind the bar -- that might be possible. In exchange for just one of the things Jack had won at cards, not real valuable or anything.

Jack looked at it, the pendant that was in his pile of winnings. It was just a piece of jewelry, nice but nothing special, some kind of translucent slateblue stone set in satin-polished metal.

He asked the guy if it was for his other girl, not Winona, and the guy gripped the edge of the table, hard.

That told Jack enough.

These days he might not want to think about things too much, and he might keep dying only to wake to the endless grating ache of resurrection, but he hadn't yet fallen so low as to want to kill a man for his gun. Not a man still able to look at something pretty and see someone he cared for.

So he said sure and they took a bottle of whatever swill they were drinking at that point out back with them. To keep things entertaining, they swapped guns.

The guy didn't much like Jack's bland off-the-shelf Orinese laser-dart-revolver. He fired it down the alley only twice before loudly wondering how the hell Jack could be depending on that flimsy, soulless thing and turning his attention back to the bottle.

++

And Jack, Jack got to touch Winona, and see what she could do.

He'd been wrong, the guy hadn't miscalled her. After firing her he knew that, oh yes, she was sweet indeed.

Her ridges and grooves seemed tooled for his hand, and as he touched her he could swear he felt her sense of purpose, her desire to please by destroying, her eagerness to make the universe a better place by reducing the number of unfit souls alive in it.

He felt himself get hard.

After a few shots, he noticed that her alloy felt warm to against his skin all the time, but her barrel barely heated after firing her bolts of energy.

Caressing her grip, he was only just able to stop himself from moaning at the thought of so much deadly power contained in her sleek, lethal shape. What that said about him was another thing Jack chose not to ponder.

The tingle he felt running through him as her energy chamber charged excited him. He ran his hands along the sides and top of her, edged his thumb around her tight muzzle. He let himself close his eyes as he followed her curves and hollows with his fingers.

Again and again, he let his fingertips wander her angles and magazine and ribs, fondling the alloy she was made of. He tried to tease out the mystery of her surface that felt almost rough against his skin when he stroked her one way, but nearly slick the other.

Gripping her tightly, he fired several shots in quick succession, obliterating what looked like the last of the garbage down the alley. He shuddered on the edge of orgasm.

It was the closest he'd been in days. He shot again, and still couldn't get there, couldn't come.

++

Failure tasted sour in his mouth. Because no matter how good she felt in his hands, no matter how effective she was, he knew that even this sweet dark gun with her siren song wouldn't be able to kill him. All this gun would let him do was kill others.

And although that was expedient and necessary and even attractive at times, he was forced to admit to himself that that was not what he really desired from her.

He felt when she realized it, felt when she started to withdraw, recognizing that no matter how lovingly he held her, she'd end up disappointing him, never be able to give him the final thing he wanted.

Winona's whispers of sweet nothing ended. She stopped calling to him.

He handed her back to her owner, who still had a purpose for her she could serve.

 

+++


	2. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Music came out perhaps just a little bleak. So I wrote a tiny epilogue that, despite the sad absence of Crichton, offers a hint of reassurance about Jack's future.

The next time he's in that quadrant of the universe is some 500 years later. Its timeline, not his. The planet he's visiting is a different one, but there's a seedy bar near the spaceport, which is just as inconveniently located as on every other planet.

Pleased with the deal he's just made, Jack makes his way back to the spaceport. Walking past the stall of a dealer in antiques and oddities, he sees a gun that looks a lot like Winona, and on impulse, stops to look.

"Get a lot of those here?" he asks the vendor.

"No sir, very unique," says the vendor. "Alas, no cartridges and its charge is nearly depleted. But still, a lovely item, for... a discerning collector such as yourself?"

Winona, if it is her, looks a little banged up around the edges. He buys her anyway.

 

+++

**Author's Note:**

> [story notes](http://nomanomynous.livejournal.com/2256.html#cutid5)
> 
>  
> 
> Feedback? Appreciated, here or [at LJ](http://nomanomynous.livejournal.com/1451.html).


End file.
